Book II. Chapter 127. Yellik

Yellik’s governor was not quite the man Ardan had expected to see on the steps of the provincial administration building. He was of medium height and wiry, with close-cropped gray hair and a face whose every wrinkle seemed a mark left by a past best left unprobed. He stood erect, with the distinctive military bearing a man never loses, even after decades away from the barracks. From the knee down, his right leg was unmistakably prosthetic. It was wooden, with metal hinges and a leather strap disappearing beneath his pant leg. It squeaked with every step, making the governor limp quite noticeably as he descended the stairs.

Several decorations gleamed dully on his fur vest, and Ardan recognized them at a glance. They had been buffed with polishing paste and, on the whole, looked far fresher than their owner. Two of them were “For the Defense of the Frontier” medals, awarded only to those who had defended the Empire’s border in combat. Arkar had one as well, but he never pinned it to his jacket, although now and then, when he thought no one could see him, he would carefully clean it and tuck it back into its case.

Yellik’s governor was not one of those officials who had spent their lives stuck behind comfortable desks. He seemed more like a former officer the state had sent to live out his years at the edge of the country. By all appearances, he had taken this posting not as an honorable retirement but as yet another order, one that had to be carried out with all due diligence.

Before Senior Magister Nalensky could so much as open his mouth, let alone come up with a greeting worthy of his “outstanding wit,” the governor took the pipe from his mouth and spoke impatiently:

“Where’s the money?”

Nalensky faltered halfway through a step. His face, only a moment ago poised to display the full measure of what he himself considered boundless charm, stretched into the snout of an otter that had just smacked into a river stone.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The money, Mr. Senior Magister.” The governor tapped his pipe against the porch railing, knocking out the ash. “The money the Hunters’ Guild promised. For the porters, for the horses, for the stagecoaches, for fodder, for provisions, and for a hundred other items that your office agreed, three months ago, to pay. The transfer was supposed to arrive on the second-to-last train, but the postman brought nothing except a notice saying that the ‘matter is under review.’ Meanwhile, my men and horses have somehow been left out of that entire process, haven’t they? Oh, right. Forgive me, Mr. Senior Magister. The horses, at least, are standing in the Stables, gobbling oats I pay for out of the city budget! A budget that, even without your expedition, is barely enough to keep the city from falling to demon-damned pieces.”

Nalensky flushed crimson and tried to wrest back control, but the governor turned out to be one of those men who didn’t so much talk as fire off phrases like a belt-fed machine gun, leaving Nalensky no time to return fire.

“I wrote to your central office three times, Mr. Nalensky,” the governor continued. Each word landed like a nail driven into a coffin lid. “And three times I received brush-offs that made me want to use the paper as toilet paper, not as official correspondence. The Hunters’ Guild routinely muddies the waters over payments, and every time yet another expedition arrives in Yellik, I wind up having to feed, house, and provide transportation for more than fifty people at my own expense, then spend months prying reimbursement out of your bureaucrats, who apparently believe horses live on air and porters work for a demon-damned word of thanks from your pomaded asses back in the capital.”

A middle-aged woman appeared in the town hall doorway behind the governor, wearing glasses and carrying a folder of documents. She stayed out of the conversation, but from the look on her face, she was enjoying the dressing-down.

Nalensky opened his mouth several times, trying to get so much as a word in. Each time, the governor started a new sentence before the Senior Magister could draw enough breath to answer. Finally, without a word, Nalensky simply reached into an inner pocket of his cloak and drew out an envelope.

He snapped it open, revealing the contents. Inside lay a check, drawn on bank paper bearing a coat of arms, stamped with the Hunters’ Guild seal, signed by the treasurer, and made out for an amount Ardan had no time to read. Judging by the slight lift of the governor’s eyebrows, though, the amount was quite sufficient. A cover letter was tucked in with it.

“Hand it over.” The governor muttered several curses through clenched teeth, took the check, and pulled a pair of tin-framed glasses from his vest pocket. He perched them on his nose and began scrutinizing the document with the kind of care that would have done any auditor proud.

Rogov checked the signature, the seal, the number, the date, the amount written out in words, and the amount in figures. Only then, after a good two minutes, did he nod. All the while, Nalensky stood wearing a look of wounded dignity, while Taisia wisely studied the pharmacy sign across the square.

“All right,” he said dryly, then tucked the check into his breast pocket. “Wait at the hotel, Mr. Nalensky. I’ll need several hours to notify the porters, check the horses, and ready the stagecoaches. Have breakfast, get some rest, and for the love of all that’s holy, don’t let your hunters wreck my city. And above all, keep them away from skirts. Because I swear by the Eternal Angels, if several fatherless brats show up in my registry again after your expedition, I’ll shut the Guild out of this city and tell every last one of them to go straight to hell—pardon me, Miss... straight to fucking hell! Let them oust me, but several seasons will pass before Parliament signs off on my dismissal, and until then you won’t see so much as the Park’s border!”

The governor wheeled around and went back inside city hall, his prosthesis creaking. A woman in glasses was already holding out the next folder to him. The door closed, and only the smell of pipe tobacco remained on the porch.

Nalensky stood staring at the closed door for several seconds, looking like a man who had just been hit over the head and had not yet decided whether to take offense or laugh. Then he squared his shoulders, turned to Taisia, plastered on his usual smile, and offered her his arm.

“Well, dear Taisia, since we’ve been told to have breakfast, let’s not upset our hospitable host by refusing.” He said it as though it were a joke.

Or perhaps he really was joking?

Ardan sighed heavily. Human humor was already hard enough for him to grasp, and affectations like these only made it worse.

The three of them headed toward the hotel. Walking beside Nalensky, Taisia leaned slightly toward him and spoke with the same air of eager innocence that had long since stopped fooling Ard but, apparently, still worked every time on the Senior Magister:

“Tell me, Chaz, what’s this problem with the Guild’s finances?” Her words came out in a breathy whisper, the kind people usually saved for much more intimate circumstances. “It seemed to me that stern gentleman was quite upset by the delay in payment, and I confess I’m a little concerned about whether the expedition has sufficient funds to ensure your safety and mine.”

Nalensky dismissed the question with a broad sweep of his free hand. The “Liniri Irika” on his wrist flashed ostentatiously. It alone could probably have paid for half the venture.

“The trouble isn’t with the finances, dear Taisia, but with the financiers,” he replied with a nonchalant smirk. “Petty bureaucrats who can’t tell the public purse from their own pockets and hold up payments just long enough to run the funds through investment schemes. Every banking institution suffers from the same old disease. Don’t trouble yourself over it. They’re trying to earn a quarter’s interest on it, then skim their cut off the top as well. And since we owe Yellik’s treasury a little under eighteen thousand, they’re hoping to make... seven hundred forty exes. They’re the very reason I’m forced to stand around listening to a one-legged governor’s tantrum.”

As he followed them, Ardan tried to decide whether Nalensky was lying. His instincts told him the truth lay somewhere in between. Most likely, the Senior Magister was bending it.

Not crudely, not clumsily, but with the elegant nonchalance of people accustomed to having their lies taken for truth. The only problem was that Ard had no way to confirm it. The Senior Magister wore a rather unusual amulet around his neck, concealed beneath his shirt collar.

A small piece of some animal’s bone, carved with a rune. A rune in the language of the Fae. It cast a thin, barely perceptible veil around Nalensky, blurring the rhythm of his heartbeat until it became a steady, indistinct hum. Ard heard Taisia’s heart, heard the hearts of passersby, even heard the heart of a horse tied to a hitching post across the street, but Nalensky’s heart eluded him like a darting fish in a murky stream.

A fairly rare and highly specialized form of Aean’Hane magic. Not something you could buy even on Sleepless Street. What’s more, only someone deeply versed in Aean’Hane would even know that such wards, meant to keep certain Firstborns from hearing, existed at all.

So it might have been a routine precaution. After all, many officials and diplomats wore amulets of this general sort, not this exact design, but set with similar protective charms. But it could also mean something more, something Ardan preferred not to “think out loud” about just yet.

The Drunken Pinecone was housed in a two-story wooden building at the edge of the square. It looked decent enough, with a spacious dining room on the ground floor and guest rooms on the second. Inside, it was warm and smelled of pine resin, fried potatoes, and that particular kind of coziness found in small inns where the landlady knows every guest by name and remembers who likes sugar in their tea and who prefers it without.

The three of them settled at a table by the window. Nalensky immediately began studying the menu, handwritten on a slate board, while Taisia looked out the window at a man crossing the square with a cart loaded with firewood. His shaggy red dog trotted beside him, every so often lifting a leg against one post after another.

Before Ardan could sit down, someone touched him on the shoulder.

He turned and saw a man standing in front of him. One glance was enough to tell him this was no clerk, much less a scholar or official.

The man seemed to take up more room than his body should have allowed. He was about Alexander Ursky’s height, perhaps a little shorter, but wider through the shoulders, with the same heavy build.

His left eye shone like glass and strayed to one side. Not the most expensive prosthesis: the glass orb was a slightly different color from the living eye on the right, throwing the whole left side of his face out of true. A broad-bladed sword in a worn scabbard hung from the left side of his belt. Above it, small vials of liquid swayed from a rawhide bandolier, and Ardi recognized them at once.

Drugs designed to enhance the body’s physical capabilities. Ardan had read descriptions of them in the Grand’s Library, in texts on alchemy for military use. The left vial held a pale green liquid with a characteristic oily film on its surface. It contained an adrenocorticotropic hormone stimulant that accelerated the adrenal glands’ response and, as a result, increased the speed of neuromuscular conduction.

The amber liquid in the right vial was slightly cloudy and contained a modified dopamine-receptor agonist that enhanced cognitive function and sped the processing of sensory information. To say nothing of the far simpler mixtures that thickened the muscle fibers themselves and increased blood flow.

Together, they gave the hunter about forty minutes of superhuman reflexes and strength. Afterward, his body paid the price in cramps, nausea, and, with regular use, something far worse.

And in this case, Ardan found himself looking at that “something worse” from very close range. The hunter’s arms looked much longer than they should have been for his height and the proportions of his torso. His forearms had lengthened several centimeters beyond normal anatomical limits, and his hands, though powerful, hung slightly lower than they should, making his silhouette look almost imperceptibly wrong. The distortion continued in his legs: his calves, even through his pants, looked disproportionately massive beside his thighs.

None of this was an inherited trait of mixed human and Firstborn blood. It was a common acquired deformity: alchemical stimulants gradually reshaped the skeleton and, in addition to their primary effect, triggered the growth of cartilage tissue.

That might have been all right, except the practice cut a person’s lifespan roughly in half. Which was why it wasn’t used in regular units of the Army, the guard corps, or even the Black House. Yes, in rare cases and for specific tasks, but never routinely. The same, of course, could not be said of the Hunters.

That said, such “potions” could be bought only with a special license, either from specialty shops or from the alchemical departments of the Spell Market.

“Captain Skofsky?” His voice was low and even, like a string drawn taut.

“That’s right.” Ardan nodded.

“Drabomir Zalessky.” Zalessky introduced himself and held out his hand. “Head of the expedition’s operational wing.”

His handshake was exactly what one would expect: firm, brief, and businesslike. Not a single wasted motion. Not a single wasted word.

“This way, Captain.” Zalessky nodded toward the far end of the hall, where two familiar faces were already seated at a table. “We need to discuss the expedition’s security arrangements on the march and in camp.”

Even the words he chose were distinctly technical.

Captains Melin and Rogov sat at a table covered by a map of the Northern Park, its corners held down by half-empty mugs of tea. At the sight of Ard, red-bearded Melin narrowed his eyes slightly but said nothing. Rogov, gaunt and gray-faced, merely lifted pale eyes to Ard before returning to the map, where routes and campsites had already been roughed out in pencil.

Zalessky sat at the head of the table and, without preamble, got down to business.

“The expedition is divided into three groups. The scientific group, led by Senior Magister Nalensky.” He pronounced the name without a trace of undue reverence. “The operational group, under my command: forty hunters, organized into teams of five. And magical support: the three of you. Two Blue military mages and one civilian Blue.” He nodded toward Ard. “Our task is to keep the scientific group safe along the entire route and throughout its work in the Park. Gentlemen, I understand you military mages already have experience with expeditions like this.”

Melin leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

“This isn’t our first rodeo, Zalessky,” he said, sounding every bit as cocksure as he had back in the Reynar saloon. “Rogov and I went with the Guild to the Ralsk borderlands two years ago, and to Azure Park last fall. So we already know that stupid protocol of yours: what to do, how to establish a perimeter, how to pair up with the hunters, and how to cover the retreat if you oh-so-scientific idiots get cornered.”

“Glad to hear it.” Zalessky nodded, ignoring the blatant insults. “The question is whether your colleague knows all that.”

All three looked at Ard: Melin with open distrust, Rogov with a cold, measuring look, and Zalessky simply waiting for an answer.

“Captain Skofsky.” Rogov was the first to speak. His gray eyes lingered on Ard’s staff longer than necessary. “Your service record shows three years in the marshals’ corps: steppe duty, patrols, caravan escorts. Have you dealt with Anomalies?”

“I have.” Ard’s answer was brief.

“Which ones, exactly?” Melin leaned slightly forward, his red beard bristling for battle. “Steppe Jerboas and Fire Lizards don’t count, Captain.”

“They don’t,” Ard agreed just as readily. He sounded neither offended nor defiant, nor did he show the slightest desire to justify himself.

To Ard’s mind, this was exactly how a concussed military mage who had spent several years in the steppes of Foothill Province ought to speak.

Rogov and Melin exchanged a look. Something like silent agreement passed between them.

“Listen, Skofsky.” Rogov’s tone softened a little, but Ardi could hear every beat of the man’s heart and smell the distinctive, unpleasant odor coming off him. “We’ve got nothing against you personally, but a trio only works if you trust the people beside you. And we don’t know you. Forgive me, but your face doesn’t exactly make us want to take a closer look, literally or otherwise. Above all, we don’t understand how a civilian security guard from a private agency ended up providing magical support for a Hunters’ Guild expedition.”

Melin jumped in at once.

“Miss Shpritz may want to sign another contract with us if she wants her protection provided by men with real combat experience, rather than by some cripple from Tutsky and Partners playing dress-up.”

Ardan finished counting to fourteen in his head. Now he really was on his way to a new personal record, and that was both a little funny and a little unsettling.

He was just about to answer. Calmly, evenly, without threats or unnecessary explanations. He would simply state his position the way Milar had taught him. Then, suddenly, a familiar voice came from behind him, sarcasm and tenderness woven so tightly together that there was no separating them.

“Gentlemen.” Taisia appeared beside the table. Ardan hadn’t even heard her approach, which, given his hearing, was unusual, to put it mildly. “I’m afraid you have the situation slightly wrong. Captain Skofsky has absolutely nothing to do with your operational support: he is my personal bodyguard, and he will protect my person and my person alone, not go guarding any old perimeter. And I certainly didn’t pay him to go strolling off on patrol with your cozy little group of men.”

She said it all with that same slightly foolish smile she usually saved for Nalensky. This time, though, her eyes shone with a cold, clear light.

“So your perfectly reasonable concerns are entirely unnecessary, Captain Melin,” she continued, inclining her head slightly. “You won’t have to take on a man you don’t know. You’ll work as a pair, the way you’re used to, while Captain Skofsky will keep me and me alone company. And he’ll do what my publishing house pays him to do. Everyone happy?”

Melin was about to object, but Rogov laid a hand on his shoulder again. Melin ground his teeth, leaned back in his chair, and fell silent.

Zalessky looked at Taisia, then at Ard, then back at Taisia, and seemed to reach a conclusion that suited him well enough.

“Agreed,” he said tersely. “Melin and Rogov will work with my five-man teams according to standard procedure. Captain Skofsky stays with Miss Shpritz. Questions?”

No questions followed, though the way Melin and Rogov watched Ard and Taisia leave the table promised nothing even remotely resembling “understanding.”

What was wrong with these captains?

And Ardi had no reason at all to suspect them of working for the Puppeteers. The Black House knew who was on the expedition and had vetted every mage, tracing their family histories nearly all the way back to their great-grandparents. Nothing in Rogov’s or Melin’s records suggested either man had betrayed his oath.

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Taisia led Ard to their table by the window, where Nalensky was already devouring a plate of fried potatoes so quickly it was as if he feared someone might take his food away. Outside, beyond the windowpane still wet from the morning fog, two hunters were grooming horses, and a boy of about ten was rolling a barrel of water toward the stable.

“Thanks,” Ard said quietly when they were far enough away from Zalessky’s table.

Taisia glanced sidelong at him. For the first time in all the days they had traveled together, she answered without barbs, venom, or pretense.

“Don’t mention it, Skofsky. Just try not to make me regret going along with your cover story.”

Ard nodded. Before he sat down, he glanced over his shoulder. Melin and Rogov were studying a map. They seemed to have forgotten all about their latest spat, but Ard noticed Melin’s fingers resting on the edge of the table, tapping almost imperceptibly against the wood. Not at all like the drumming of a man lost in thought. More like that of someone barely holding back a burst of rage.

Beyond the window, the wind drove a scrap of newspaper across the square. It kept spinning through swirls of dust until it lodged in a puddle beside the administration building’s front steps.

“Taisia.”

“What is it, my dear disfigured captain?” The familiar sarcasm was back in Miss Shpritz’s tone.

“Melin’s and Rogov’s records both say they were discharged from frontline service for sexual misconduct that disgraced the uniform,” Ardi recalled. “And if I remember right, you conducted investigations into field brothels and the spread of venereal disease among personnel on the northern front. Back then, a tribunal stripped dozens of those involved of their pensions and decorations and threw them out of the army. Mages included.”

Taisia said nothing.

“Did your article have anything to do with their being fired?”

Taisia didn’t answer at once.

“Perhaps, Captain. Perhaps...”

Ardan turned toward the two captains again. Now it was clear why they had tried so hard to take Taisia under their wing. The idea was simple enough. In terms of danger, expeditions to places like the anomaly parks were little different from ventures into the Dead Lands. So all it would take was some minor accident, some “incident” that Melin and Rogov “wouldn’t be able to do a thing about,” and Taisia would remain in the park forever.

Simple, elegant revenge.

“Ahgrat,” Ardi rasped softly through clenched teeth.

“Bless you, Captain,” Taisia replied. “And I hope those epaulets aren’t just for show.”

The governor carried out his part of the bargain faster and more conscientiously than Ardan had expected of a man who’d had to listen to Nalensky’s complaints without shooting him on the spot. By four that afternoon, a caravan had assembled in a vacant lot beyond Ellik’s eastern outskirts, among stakes jutting from the ground, ropes strung from stake to stake, and stacks of fresh lumber. The site was clearly being prepared for some major construction project.

The horses rested peacefully beside long rows of hitching rails knocked together from unplaned poles. Around thirty had been brought in, and, truth be told, not one of them would have caused a stir at an auction in Foothill Province.

Short and stocky, with thick manes and broad hooves better suited to mountain trails and washed-out forest roads than to the open expanses of the south. Most of them, like automobiles in the Metropolis, bore the marks of a working life. Chafe marks on their flanks from harnesses, scars from whips and branches, bald spots on their rumps where their saddles had rubbed their backs for years.

There wasn’t a purebred among them, of course. But Ard, who had worked on a farm for six years, knew perfectly well that breeding mattered far less in a place like this than the ability to withstand piercing cold, stamina on climbs, and the ability to keep from stumbling on wet stone.

The stagecoaches, though, looked more imposing than their “living engines.”

All seven stood off to one side, away from the horses. They were massive, with four wheels, wooden “baskets” mounted on iron frames, and cloth canopies stretched over arched supports. Their steel-rimmed wheels rose almost to Ard’s waist. The hubs had been reinforced with extra bolts that, judging by the fresh scratches on the metal, had been screwed in only moments before. Each coach would be drawn by four horses in thick leather harness fitted with brass buckles. The tack looked as battered as the draft animals themselves, but perfectly sound.

Each coach had a box seat with room for two. Beneath the canopy, iron hooks arranged in rings had been screwed into the wooden floor, and ropes were already being threaded through them to secure the cargo.

Ardan examined every detail with a practiced, critical eye and noted that the coaches were fitted with leaf springs. An old design. Whenever they hit a bad rut, those springs would send everything in the baskets bouncing so hard that ropes alone wouldn’t be enough; someone would have to hold the cargo down by hand. That, in fact, was why the caravan needed porters.

And the porters turned out to be mere boys.

Exactly twenty had gathered in the vacant lot. Young men, fifteen to seventeen years old. Lean and sun-browned, they wore worn boots and work jackets that had either belonged to their fathers and been cut down to size or been handed down by their older brothers. Some had knives in homemade sheaths hanging from their belts. One of them, the tallest, had a mop of straw-colored hair and freckles on his wind-chapped face. He carried a hunting rifle slung loosely across his back, one that had clearly seen better days.

The porters stood apart in a small group. They spoke quietly among themselves and cast curious but cautious glances at the newcomers. Ardan saw neither timidity nor fear in their eyes. If anything, they already seemed somewhat accustomed to this sort of work.

Taisia had been watching the preparations from the inn’s porch. She came over to Ard, lowered her voice, and spoke with genuine concern.

“Skofsky, half of them are just children.” She was a little stunned. “We’re hiring children with no papers at all for a week-long journey across the steppe. Three and a half days to the Park, then another three and a half back.”

Ardan turned to Taisia, a journalist who had grown up in the city, and answered calmly.

“It’s the only way to earn money here, Taisia.” He shrugged. “Look around. The soil in and around Yellik is no good for either crops or pasture. The nearest mining operations, ore mines, and Ertalain shafts lie several days’ journey south, and without a recommendation from the Guild of Workers and Builders, it’s practically impossible to get hired at any of them. So this town lives off the Park and the guides who take people through it. I’d bet every one of these boys has been going into the forest with his father or an older brother since he was ten, if not eight. They know the trails better than the Hunters from the capital do, and believe me, they’ll handle the ropes and hooks far more reliably than any adult laborer the Guild might have dragged along from the capital. So you won’t find any dirt here.”

Taisia remained silent. She looked at the boys, pursed her lips slightly, and said nothing more. Ard could tell that she disagreed with him, but she didn’t argue any further. For Taisia Shpritz, that was almost the same as admitting he was right.

The loading began half an hour later and lasted the rest of the evening. Working in near-total silence, the porters moved with practiced skill, hefting the heavy tin-sheathed wooden crates and hauling them up folding plank ramps into the coaches in teams of two or three. Each crate was lashed to the floor with hemp ropes threaded through iron hooks and tied in sailors’ knots. The boys tied the knots so fast that Ard couldn’t follow their fingers.

In truth, the porters’ job wasn’t so much the loading itself as what came afterward: throughout the journey, someone had to sit inside each coach and keep a grip on the ropes over every bump, down every slope, and around every turn, preventing the crates from shifting and tipping the vehicle over. A simple task, but monotonous and exhausting, requiring strong arms and endless patience.

Once, an expedition from the Guild of Sciences came to Polskih’s farm in need of porters for the journey to the Alcade foothills. They were prospecting for new veins of Ertalain. Ardan even volunteered at first, but as soon as he learned what the job involved, he backed out. Sitting for several days with his arms wrapped around a wooden crate wasn’t worth the five exes they were offering him for a three-day journey.

They probably weren’t paying much more here.

While the porters worked, the researchers, hunters, and mages were allowed to approach the herd.

Ardan was in no hurry. He stood off to one side, watching Melin and Rogov, who plainly knew their way around horses, reach the hitching rail first. They gave the animals a quick once-over and chose the two largest geldings. A bay and a black. Both sturdy and sinewy.

Zalessky wasted no time either. He chose a massive gray stallion for himself and led it away, its head heavy and its hooves the size of soup plates.

The hunters, meanwhile, laughed and jostled one another as they chose among the remaining horses. A quarter of an hour later, fifteen or so still stood at the hitching rail, hardly different from the ones already led away.

Ard walked along the row and stopped before the piebald mare at the very end. She was short, noticeably smaller than the others, with a narrow chest and long, lean legs. Her mane, white with dark patches, was slightly tangled and full of burrs, while the coat along her sides had grown matted and dull from lack of care. But her large, dark eyes, fringed with thick lashes, watched Ard calmly and attentively. Without the nervous wariness he saw in the eyes of her larger, more headstrong companions.

Ardi smiled. On a long march, and in a forest where trails wind between roots and stones, where branches lash a horse’s muzzle and its rider’s face, and where something with claws and teeth may leap from the brush at any moment, what matters most in a mount isn’t strength at all, and sometimes it isn’t even stamina. It’s plain, ordinary calm.

A strong, fast, but high-strung horse would become a liability on a forest trail, capable of throwing its rider at the very first snap of a branch or rustle in the undergrowth. A calm mare, less powerful perhaps but long accustomed to the sounds and smells of the forest, was worth ten hot-blooded stallions.

Ardi knew that much... from the other side of the forest. Horses sometimes wandered into Alcade’s forested floodplains. Careless cowboys might lose them, while unlucky horse thieves might abandon their haul to throw the marshals off their trail. Shali had taught Ard how to hunt horses, just in case a season of Hunger ever came.

Ardan looked around.

The hunters were busy with their mounts. The porters were loading the last crates. Nalensky was arguing with Zalessky about something by the lead stagecoach. Taisia smoked beside the hotel steps, watching the sunset. No one paid Ard the slightest attention.

He stepped toward the mare, reached out, and laid his palm on her neck. Her coat was warm beneath his fingers, faintly damp with evening dew. The mare neither shied nor flinched. She simply turned her head and pressed her soft, velvety lips to his shoulder.

Ard leaned close to her ear and spoke softly, almost inaudibly, in a language no one in this city knew. A language with no written form, because no one had ever invented one. It had come into the world as trees and grasses do, and it belonged to those who lived among them.

“Hello, spirit of the northern steppes and the forest,” Ardan whispered. “I will be a brother to you, and you will be a sister to me. I will care for you as best I can. And you, help me. You and I, northern sister.”

The mare snorted. Her nostrils flared, drawing in Ard’s scent. Not quite human, tinged with something of the forest, something animal and ancient that had come to him through his matabar blood. She raised her head and shook her mane. Something like recognition flickered in her dark eyes.

And she answered in the broken tongue of wild beasts.

“Brother. Run, when run. Sleep, when stand. Eat. Drink. You and I.”

Ardan smiled. For the first time since the journey began, he truly smiled. Not out of politeness, nor because he needed to keep up a civilized front, but simply because there was a living creature beside him he didn’t have to pretend with. He stroked the mare’s muzzle, picked the burrs from her mane, and untied the reins from the hitching rail.

The saddle he’d ended up with was far from the best. Worn, army-issue, with a high pommel and wide stirrup leathers. Ard swung it onto the mare’s back, straightened the saddle pad beneath it to make sure there were no folds anywhere that might chafe her hide, and tightened the girth.

He took care not to pull it too tight, leaving a palm’s width of room so the mare could breathe comfortably on the climbs. A minute later, when she exhaled and her rib cage narrowed slightly, he tightened the girth another notch, finally securing the saddle.

He adjusted the stirrups to suit his height. His long legs meant the stirrup leathers had to be let out almost as far as they would go; otherwise, his knees would strike the pommel with every step. He checked the martingale, made sure the snaffle sat properly in the mare’s mouth without pinching her gums, and tightened the bridle’s noseband by one hole.

After another check of the stirrup leathers, which always gave him trouble, Ardi turned to the saddlebags and divided the weight evenly between the two sides. In the left one he packed a change of underwear, spare socks, a felt pad for sleeping on the ground, and a staff-cleaning kit Dagdag had given him before his departure, along with a note containing just one word: “CLEAN!” As if Ardan had never cleaned his staff...

His gaze happened to fall on the dried mud lodged deep in the gaps where the lacquer had cracked.

All right, maybe Lieutenant Dagdag is right...

The provisions Tess had prepared went into the right-hand bag. She’d bundled everything in oiled cloth, bound it with twine, and tucked a note inside. Ard had already read it four times or so, but meant to read it a fifth time.

He stowed the case of accumulators last of all, padding it on all sides with soft cloth and cinching it down with an extra strap so the jolting wouldn’t knock it around. Sixteen accumulators per Star: an entire fortune. If handled carelessly, the accumulators could not only shatter but explode, though the latter was, of course, unlikely.

A military accumulator, unlike a household one, had a greater-than-zero chance of being destroyed. Among military mages, that “near-zero probability” sometimes became fodder for jokes and tall tales.

So, as regulations required, Dagdag had warned Ard. With a smile that was somehow far too cheerful, he’d described what would happen if Ardan failed to submit a full, detailed report for every accumulator he used, explaining what he’d used it for. Ard took the warning to heart and had no intention of risking his own hide to test the limits of dwarven optimism. Dagdag was already irritated with him over the outcome of the race, if not actually holding a grudge.

Getting the stagecoaches and horses ready dragged on until nearly dusk. The sun sank behind the hills, leaving a long scarlet band across the sky. It slowly thinned, giving way to shimmering stars, and by the time the last crate was secured and the last rope drawn tight, night had already fallen over Ellik.

Ardan expected the caravan to set out in the morning, once they’d rested and eaten breakfast, but Nalensky ordered otherwise.

“We leave at once,” the Senior Magister announced as he fastened his gloves and surveyed those assembled from the driver’s box of the lead stagecoach. “For every day we delay, the Guild pays for the horses while they stand idle and covers the porters’ wages. The sooner we reach the First Station, the sooner we’ll begin work.”

Standing beside his gray stallion, Zalessky turned his head slightly and gave Nalensky the look one reserves for a man who has just proposed something so absurd that even taking offense would be pointless.

“Mr. Senior Magister,” he said evenly. His glass eye caught a dull gleam from the torches the porters had already lit. “The road to the First Station runs through Wolf’s Blanket and Bear’s Rift. Neither stretch is fit for caravan travel at night, especially with loaded stagecoaches and without first scouting the trails.”

“I know the route perfectly well, Zalessky.” Nalensky did not even turn his head. It was as if he were discussing the weather rather than a risky journey. “And I also know perfectly well that your hunters are paid by the day. I have no intention of paying them to sit idle and go on a drinking binge in the saloon.”

“This isn’t about money, Mr. Senior Magister,” Zalessky objected. “It’s about safety, including yours. At night, on an unfamiliar trail, with stagecoaches on thirty-year-old springs and horses restless from too long in the stable and jumpy in the torchlight, we’ll be taking more risks than we need to. To say nothing of how tired everyone is after being rattled around on the train.”

Nalensky finally finished his adjustments on the driver’s box, set his staff in its special holder, and turned to Zalessky. Something hard and cold surfaced in his expression, beneath his usual smooth geniality, reminding Ard once again that this man wore a Yellow cloak.

“Don’t forget your place, Mr. Zalessky.” He kept his voice low but pitched it so everyone could hear. “Here, I decide what we do and when. Not you. You’re my subordinate. Not the other way around. So we’re leaving now. And not another word.”

Zalessky clenched his jaw. The muscles along his disproportionately long forearms tightened, and his hand closed on his broadsword’s hilt until his knuckles went white. But Zalessky said nothing. He spun around, sprang into the saddle, and gave a short whistle to his subordinates. Exchanging disgruntled looks and muttering curses, they began taking up their positions along the caravan.

Ard stood in his stirrups. The mare bore his weight with little protest, merely shifting her forefeet slightly to settle more comfortably before turning her head, her warm breath brushing his knee.

The caravan set off.

The coaches rolled along the road, their springs creaking as they rocked over the bumps like boats on a gentle swell. Torches mounted on poles set into brackets along the sides of each coach cast orange pools of light across the road. Within them, the shadows of horses, people, and the occasional tree darted about, merging into one continuous, shifting pattern. Hooves drummed on the packed earth, harnesses jingled, and porters called back and forth beneath the coaches’ canopies, their voices carrying through the darkness.

The little town slipped away far faster than Ard had expected. The last houses flashed past on either side of the road, and the caravan emerged into open country.

Before them stretched the northern steppe. Endless and silent, living by laws of its own, laws that had nothing to do with the Empire’s code. Low, stiff grass stretched in every direction, all the way to the horizon. In the moonlight, it shimmered with the silver of a sea frozen for the winter. The hills rolled one after another. Soft and gently sloping, with fog billowing in the hollows between them. So white and so thick it looked like spilled milk.

The dark sky opened overhead, impossibly broad. So brilliant it took his breath away. There in the darkness above, thousands of stars shone once more, stars Ard hadn’t seen since leaving Alcade. In the capital, the sky was always murky with smoke and light pollution. Only the brightest, most stubborn stars pierced the city’s invisible dome. But here they hung so low that it seemed he could reach out and touch them.

Ardi closed his eyes for a moment, calling to mind the star charts of Atta’nha. Once more, he felt as though he could set out for any corner of their western lands. As long as stars shone overhead, Ardan could always find his way.

Where to?

Anywhere.

Far to the east, beyond a ridge of hills, fierce heat lightning flared. A storm roamed the horizon. It circled their caravan like an inexperienced predator. It sniffed warily at them in gusts of wind but dared not come any closer. The lightning picked out the silhouettes of clouds piled atop one another like spring ice floes. The thunder reached them, muted like the lazy growl of a well-fed beast.

Several more months would pass before the storm front gathered strength and moved south, where it would descend upon the Metropolis as the Week of Storms.

Ard took a deep breath. For the first time in twelve days, he was not trapped in a stuffy compartment that smelled of Taisia’s cigarettes, or breathing Nalensky’s cologne during the infrequent stops. For the first time in six long months, he was outside the stone walls of the Metropolis, away from its reek of diesel fumes and smoke from factory stacks. He felt his lungs, accustomed to city smoke, expand like enormous bellows.

The steppe air smelled of grass and earth, wet stone and distant rain. No clamor, no bustle of people and machines disturbed the ancient land. Only the world as it had been before people.

Sleeping Spirits...

How much Ardi would have given to kick off his boots and race the wind barefoot, the wind already whipping the horses’ manes and driving silvery waves across the grass. How badly he wanted to feel the earth against the soles of his feet. So cold and alive. He wanted to feel every pebble and every blade of grass. To run as he had in childhood, in the Alcade forest, when the whole world fit between two trees and a stream, and his greatest concern was reaching the berry ridge before Shali or Guta did.

But his lot in life was different now.

Ardan drew even with the lead stagecoach. Nalensky sat on the creaking driver’s box, bundled in a heavy coat with its collar turned up. The Senior Magister handled the four-horse team deftly, with an agility surprising in a man of his build. Apparently, going on expeditions during his decades of service to the Guild had taught him at least this much, if not tact or modesty.

Taisia had settled inside the coach with the cloth flap pulled slightly back. She had already claimed the bedrolls for herself and tucked a rolled blanket under her head. In the dim torchlight filtering through the cloth, Ard could see only the tip of her cigarette smoldering like an orange pinprick and the glint of her blue eyes watching him from the shadows.

“Admiring the view, Skofsky?” Her voice was quiet, a little weary.

“Yes,” Ard answered honestly.

Taisia let the silence linger. Then she took a drag and blew out a small cloud of smoke. Her drawl went dreamy.

“It’s beautiful here.”

Ardan said nothing. He urged the mare on a little as he took his place to the right of the coach. A long journey awaited them. Three days to the Park’s First Station, through the Wolf’s Blanket, the Bear’s Rift, along the bank of the Gray Stream, and through the Pine Corridor. Naturally, the Galessians hadn’t invented the names. They had merely translated them from the language of the Northern elves and marked the old place-names on the map. And Ardan truly hoped that at least the beginning of their journey would be free of unwanted adventures.

At least this once.

At least for a few days.

The steppe was still silent. The caravan crawled along the road, a long, dark snake. The only sounds in the night were the creak of wheels, the jingle of harness, the clop of hooves, and the soft, monotonous singing of one of the porters, drifting from the last coach.

Ardan reached into his saddlebag, rummaged around, and pulled out a pencil and a sheet of paper folded into quarters. He spread the paper over the pommel of his saddle and pressed it down with his palm so the wind wouldn’t carry it away. Then, swaying in time with the mare’s steps, he paused to think.

It was the first time Ardi had written to Tess... And for some reason, the faces of Anna and Sergeant Elliny flashed through his mind. Then he heard the Voice as well.

“I’ve seen the eyes of men who wrote from the border to the people they loved, Ard. And their eyes looked nothing like yours.”

He wondered what his own eyes looked like now. Because, as the Sleeping Spirits knew, he’d felt such a sharp stab of pain in his heart that he’d almost stopped breathing. Maybe the steppe smelled a little like home, but he would have preferred the scent of spring flowers blooming beside the stream.

He poised the pencil over the paper for a second, then wrote:

“My beloved Tess...”

But then he stopped, because he had no idea what to write after those two words. He wanted to tell her everything: how much he’d missed her; about the steppe, the stars, the piebald mare, the boy porters, Nalensky and Taisia, and the storm in the east; and how much he missed her hands in his hair and her voice humming yet another tune. None of it could be contained in anything as simple and human as “words.”

How could plain letters traced with a pencil stub convey the full depth of what he felt? How could they contain everything swelling inside his chest? Maybe Ard could manage it, but certainly not on one single sheet of paper. Maybe fifty sheets, or a hundred. No. Even that wouldn’t be enough...

He looked at the sky.

The stars grew brighter and brighter with every passing second.

Ardi lowered the pencil to the paper again and wrote:

“Mybeloved Tess.There are so many stars here. I’m thinking of you.”

Then he thought for a moment, crossed out “I’m thinking of you,” and changed it to:

“I miss you.”

Then he thought some more, crossed out “I miss you,” and wrote off to the side:

“There are so many stars here. And they’re all for you.”

The mare snorted. The opening line was already a tangle of cross-outs.

“All right, that’s probably horribly corny,” Ardan said through clenched teeth. He clenched his fist around the pencil. “But I’m not a poet or a writer.”

The torch atop the stagecoach swayed in the wind. The caravan crawled north through the night.

Ard put his pencil away and pressed the letter, covered in scribbles, against his chest beneath his jacket, close to his heart.

He’d finish writing it later. When he found the right words.

For now: the stars, the steppe, and the road.